Siila Watt-Cloutier, Officer of the Order of Canada and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee is an International Inuit leader and activist. In Iqaluit in 2009, she addresses the 9th Annual Lafontaine-Baldwin Symposium on Canada's North, Inuit wisdom, and Inuit resiliency in the face of climate change and a rapidly changing cultural landscape. In English with a preface in Inuktitut. <

Marcus Wilcke has been a Public Health Nurse in Pangnirtung, Nunavut for over 20 years. He discusses the various changes in the health of the community over the years and the possible connections to climate change.

English Transcript: Back then, nobody hardly got sick because we were the only family out there. Nowadays, everyone is mingling amongst communities, and we get sick. It was not like that before. Sometimes we would get sick and use things from the land to heal us, like mushrooms and their powder and longs from a rabbit we'd use as band-aids, and tissue from ujuk fat.

English Transcript: We never had bears. Sometimes we would go polar bear hunting way out there and we'd come back with nothing. Not very often someone would get a bear because there was none in our area...They say there are bears around, a lot of them, that's what I hear. There were no bear in this area.

Dominique Berteaux, PhD, is a Conservation Biologist at the University of Quebec at Rimouski. He discusses at length his studies with fox species, among other things, and the effects of climate change on wildlife in the Canada's North.

Video on Demand

About the film

Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change had its world premiere October 23, 2010, at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto. The complete film also streamed online simultaneously watched by more than 1500 viewers around the world. Following the film, a Q&A with filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Dr. Ian Mauro included live call-in by Skype from viewers from Pond Inlet, New York, Sydney, Australia and other locations.

Nunavut-based director Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat The Fast Runner) and researcher and filmmaker Dr. Ian Mauro (Seeds of Change) have teamed up with Inuit communities to document their knowledge and experience regarding climate change. This new documentary, the world’s first Inuktitut language film on the topic, takes the viewer “on the land” with elders and hunters to explore the social and ecological impacts of a warming Arctic. This unforgettable film helps us to appreciate Inuit culture and expertise regarding environmental change and indigenous ways of adapting to it.

Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change had its world premiere October 23, 2010, at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto. The complete film also streamed online simultaneously watched by more than 1500 viewers around the world. Following the film, a Q&A with filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Dr. Ian Mauro included live call-in by Skype from viewers from Pond Inlet, New York, Sydney, Australia and other locations.

Nunavut-based director Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat The Fast Runner) and researcher and filmmaker Dr. Ian Mauro (Seeds of Change) have teamed up with Inuit communities to document their knowledge and experience regarding climate change. This new documentary, the world’s first Inuktitut language film on the topic, takes the viewer “on the land” with elders and hunters to explore the social and ecological impacts of a warming Arctic. This unforgettable film helps us to appreciate Inuit culture and expertise regarding environmental change and indigenous ways of adapting to it.

Exploring centuries of Inuit knowledge, allowing the viewer to learn about climate change first-hand from Arctic residents themselves, the film portrays Inuit as experts regarding their land and wildlife and makes it clear that climate change is a human rights issue affecting this ingenious Indigenous culture. Hear stories about Arctic melting and how Inuit believe that human and animal intelligence are key to adaptability and survival in a warming world.

Community-based screenings of the film are now being organized across Canada. Stay tuned for more information, new blog posts and videos added to this channel regularly.

Please feel free to contact us should you like to organize a screening in your area. Email us: isuma@isuma.ca.